


Into my arms

by blumoonlight



Category: U2 (Band)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre- Achtung Baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29695884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blumoonlight/pseuds/blumoonlight
Summary: In which Bono and Adam try to cope with their lives at the beginning of 1990
Relationships: Bono/Adam Clayton, Bono/Ali Hewson





	Into my arms

**Author's Note:**

> I've no idea what happened but here is it

You didn’t answer any of my phone calls. None, Adam. For the first couple of days Ali convinced me you were just partying, enjoying these first days of freedom after a never-ending tour that, thank god, we have just finished. The end of an era, my love.

 _God_ , it didn’t seem even real, but here we are. Dublin, January 1990. Me, sitting in my kitchen and you not answering my phone calls. Me watching my daughter discovering the world while you – well, I’m pretty sure you must be asleep by now, or maybe not. Maybe you are perfectly awake and functioning, showered and already feed. Maybe you are already awake but still lying in that big bed of yours watching television. No, not the television, you’re too sophisticated for television in the morning. You are lying in your purple sheets listening to music, and if I concentrate enough, I can even guess what you’re listening to. But not now, Jordan has just decided she wants to be held and I’m happy to please her.

Larry told me just yesterday that I have to stop worrying about you. “Adam is almost thirty, Bono” he told me like I didn’t know your age. Like I’ve forgot that after yours it’s mine turn to turn 30. But he thinks that for once I have to let you be.

“If he wants to hear your voice after being forced to listening to it nonstop for three years, he will call you back” was Edge’s response to my concern. And by the way Hollie wants you to know she has lost her second tooth and she has made a beautiful drawing of it for you, very realistic to be honest. She thinks you could frame it and hang it next to the paintings you have above your fireplace. You know, the surrealistic one with naked women in the night.

The problem is, Adam…I mean, I would understand if you didn’t answer only my phone calls. You have all the reasons in the world to avoid me and I get it. But the problem is that you are not even answering Edge’s phone calls, or Larry’s. Even Paul would like to know what the hell you are doing. The last time we spoke you told me that, quoting you, “ _First thing I’ll leave for a place where winter is so fucking hot_ ” and for the first week I thought that was the reason why you weren’t answering me. But then, Monday if I remember well, Gav told me he had just met you in some club in Temple Bar. “Pissed and sounding British as always” he has said, “and pale like a fucking ghost.” So, you have been there for all the time. You were just avoiding me and the rest of us.

***

It’s late when the telephone rings and it’s not its sound that wakes me, but the cry of the tiny thing currently sleeping on my chest called Jordan. Ali mumbles something before getting out of the duvet and leaves our room to go down to the living room and make the phone stop ringing.

“It’s you, love” I hear her saying but Jordan’s mission seems to be waking up all our neighbors and it’s my turn to stand up and carry her with me. She doesn’t like when I try to sing her to sleep, she probably hates it. This shit has worked with Edge’s girls and with every single baby somebody has put in my arms but somehow not with my own baby. When I turn around, I find the missus leaning against the door jamb and handing me the phone.

“It’s for you” she whispers before taking Jordan from me and pushing me out of the room.

Somehow, I know it’s you and when you whisper my name a part of me know I’m fucked. “Are you okay?” I ask instead of greeting you only because you don’t sound okay at all.

“Since when do you care?” You ask back still whispering. So it’s going to be one of those conversations. The ones where you accuse me of being a heartless asshole and where I promise you everything is going to be alright.

“Adam” I say trying to be the adult person for once. “Where are you?”

“If I told you where I am, will you reach me?”

And here we are. Tonight I’ll play the heartless asshole just for you. “Not tonight.” Definitely the wrong answer.

“You still haven’t told her, don’t you?”

“Ad – ”

“She has always been nice to me, even now. She has asked me if I needed her to come and take me back home. _Your wife_ , Bono. Your wife said yes where you said _not tonight_.”

And with that I’ve no idea what to say.

“The last night” you say still whispering. “The last night before the end, did she know?”

I close my eyes because I know what it’s coming.

“Did she know what you were doing when she came looking for you?” That is followed by the noise of something breaking against something else. I don’t know where you are so I can’t figure it out what’s just happened.

“Adam, where are you?” I ask again. Nothing. “If you won’t tell me I’m gonna ask Ali.”

“If I do, will you reach me?”

***

The hotel you choose takes me almost half an hour to get there. We have never been there, but I remember you telling it was nice.

When you open your room door the first thing I notice is that you have been drinking. You are wearing a pair of pyjamas pants and nothing else. We are in the middle of January and you are almost naked in a cold hotel room.

“Are you sure nobody has followed you?” you ask closing quietly the door.

“ _What?_ ” I ask noticing a broken glass near the bed. I glance quick at your bare feet and I have to take a deep breath. I love being drunk with you, you know that. But now that I’m not drunk I only want to scream. “Wear your shoes” I say like I were dealing with a child.

You raised a single eyebrow and light the cigarette already in your lips. “Yes, mum” you say only after the first drag.

I choose to ignore that. “What are you doing there?”

You shrug and I’m not sure anymore if I want to know the answer. “A nice lady from Edinburgh likes the place.”

I know I shouldn’t be jealous. I don’t have any right to be, but I am and you notice it almost immediately.

“Oh, love” you say visibly amused. “Don’t look at me like that, not everybody is lucky enough to find the love of their life at 15.”

You sit on the bed and without even thinking twice I follow you on the creamy sheets. Your chest is warm under my fingers and I want to tell you to wear something because we still in the middle of January but when I glance up from your skin, I found you staring. Ali once told me she didn’t know why nobody has ever spent paragraphs talking about your eyes.

“Everybody is always talking about your eyes, B” she had said “And I swear, love, they are beautiful and I love them.” That had cost her a kissed. “But Adam got beautiful blue eyes too.”

“What about Larry’s eyes?” I had asked trying to diverge the conversation away from you. She had shocked her head.

“Everyone likes Larry, B. I’m talking about Adam.” I don’t remember how that conversation had ended – probably with me telling how beautiful her eyes were and making her lips forget your name.

But now, your blue eyes which nobody has ever talked about are staring me. And what can I do if not staring back? Your smile – your half up half down smile – crosses your lips and I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you and drive you back home because hotels are only allowed for when we are on tour. But we can’t get out of there, not before you confess what the hell is going on in your head.

“I’m sorry” you say while a trembling hand starts caressing my head, my hair. I remember you telling me to never cut them. You like how they feel through your finger. You like pulling or stroking them whenever you need to. “I’m just drunk.” I stroke the soft skin that covers your collarbone. I know you are. If you weren’t you wouldn’t have called me at 3 in the morning.

“Don’t worry” I say, meaning it because there’s nothing you have to be sorry about. Things between us have always been complicated, from the very beginning, and neither of us has ever thought they will get easier with the time. “Just tell me where you have been for all this time.”

You shrug and I feel that under my hands.“I’ve never left the town, Bono.”

“And why did you never answer my calls?” The hand that was still stroking my hair froze but you just watch me watching you back.

“Why?” I ask again only because I really want to drive you back home.

“Because I don’t really want to know what – I don’t really want to know how happy you all are. You know what I mean. I’m not in the mood for listening to Edge talking about how wonderful having three tiny things screaming in the morning is, or even to see you and –”

I immediately wrap my arm around you trying to get you as close as I can. You don’t resist and let me hug you properly. I start murmuring stupid excuses that won’t solve anything and you just hug me tighter.

“We have always known that this thing would have to end” you mumble against my neck. “Ali would have always come before me, I knew that. I know that.”

Back then, the only two feelings that made me do what I did were friendship and adrenaline. Nothing less. Nothing more. Any of us had never thought that the love we share – the love we have always shared – would have grown in something more. I would have never expected to love you as…as something far different than the boy I had once kissed after our first real gig. I kissed you because you were the one in the room with me and when you kissed me back instead of pushing me away and laugh as I had expected, a part of me has probably fall in love with you without me noticing.

You lie down dragging me with you and laugh when your head hit the pillow. A part of me hate your for doing that. That same part of me that, only two weeks ago, has kissed you on the cheek after telling you exactly why this thing between us must end. It wasn’t the first time some of us have tried to stop it. It had happened in 1982 – a few weeks before my wedding, after I’ve asked you to be my best man, I also asked you to let me go, and your promise had lasted five months - and then in 1985 – you were the one asking this time but again we weren’t capable to let the other go. I’ve thought the one in 1989 would have been the last time, but then again you changed it making me forget why the birth of my first daughter should have changed the things between us. Two weeks ago, I’ve washed your come away from my fingers, kissed you on your cheek and only then asked you to really end this. And look we are we now, love.

Your hand trailed down and I let you only to drag your hand away when your fingers brushed my zip. “ _Adam_.”

You chuckle and raise both of your hands over your head.

“Good boy” I say without thinking but thank god you only laugh at that. Thank god you are drunk enough to find that ridiculous considering the situation. I look down at you and you are still smiling at me as I’m not the heartless asshole who has just move your hand away from my crotch. I smile back at you and you trace my lips with your finger and for a moment I’m terrified you could lean in and kiss me – okay I’m not that terrified that you could kiss me, I’m terrified because I don’t know if I would be able to say no again.

“Don’t worry” you whisper visibly amused by that stupid face of mine, “I won’t kiss you”.

I smile, only because I don’t know what else to do. My hands, my arms are holding you. My eyes are staring back at yours. And you seem pretty happy with that. I am pretty happy with that, with holding a man in my arms, with holding you in my arms. But the truth is that I’m not happy, not fucking happy at all. And all I want to do I smash my head against something for all the thoughts that are currently living in my head. Some of them are so filthy as to amaze even myself. The others are just so fucking sad that I’m terrified I’m going to cry right there in front of you. It wouldn’t be the first time, though. And who is the responsible for all that thoughts? You, of course is you.

“It’s okay, love” you say like you are reading all my thoughts, like you are breathing and living them right now with me. “It’s okay, we will find a solution.”

I kiss your forehead and i begin to murmur again stupid things right against you skin until you close your eyes.


End file.
